[magi] Religion and spirituality
NB: I'm using "religion" and "spirituality" here to refer to phenomena, not qualities. There is a spiritual (adj.) component to religion, and a religious (adj) component to spirituality. What I'm talking about here is the stuff that can take an article - "I follow a religion," or "I follow a spirituality." Mentally capitalize them, if it helps.
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It seems to me that religion is a building, with rooms and doors and staircases and windows. To a certain extent you bring your own furniture in, put posters on the walls, make the space yours. You even discover that the house is a mansion, with rooms you haven't explored, and halls you didn't know existed.
Spirituality is being planted in the middle of the world, where things change due to the season and the acts of nature, and boulders may come crashing down mountainsides (or may not), and you have landmarks but even your landmarks have been built up or worn down over the ages. And you go wandering around the world finding things that you'd never have imagined from behind the last hill, and things that look totally out-of-place, and things that want to eat you.
Each one would take more than a lifetime to explore fully, but religion has a format - an added degree of stability. You know the rough layout from room to room, and the style it's built in. You know that other people in your religion will have roughly the same experiences you do, and have been through the same rooms.
Spirituality, on the other hand, is less unified - more individualistic. Make no mistake, unity and individuality are both positive qualities. Purity and complexity are both positive qualities. But one has to give for the other to take. If you follow a spirituality, and others do as well, there's no telling if their paths will have approximated yours or if they'll have come from a radically different direction. They may come from in front of you, so each of you has been where the other is headed. They may not choose to walk with you and share your journey.
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I follow a spirituality, if anyone is wondering. More on that to come.
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It seems to me that religion is a building, with rooms and doors and staircases and windows. To a certain extent you bring your own furniture in, put posters on the walls, make the space yours. You even discover that the house is a mansion, with rooms you haven't explored, and halls you didn't know existed.
Spirituality is being planted in the middle of the world, where things change due to the season and the acts of nature, and boulders may come crashing down mountainsides (or may not), and you have landmarks but even your landmarks have been built up or worn down over the ages. And you go wandering around the world finding things that you'd never have imagined from behind the last hill, and things that look totally out-of-place, and things that want to eat you.
Each one would take more than a lifetime to explore fully, but religion has a format - an added degree of stability. You know the rough layout from room to room, and the style it's built in. You know that other people in your religion will have roughly the same experiences you do, and have been through the same rooms.
Spirituality, on the other hand, is less unified - more individualistic. Make no mistake, unity and individuality are both positive qualities. Purity and complexity are both positive qualities. But one has to give for the other to take. If you follow a spirituality, and others do as well, there's no telling if their paths will have approximated yours or if they'll have come from a radically different direction. They may come from in front of you, so each of you has been where the other is headed. They may not choose to walk with you and share your journey.
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I follow a spirituality, if anyone is wondering. More on that to come.